	<p>
		Let&apos;s take a look at a verse, then break down what it really says:
	</p>
	<div class="cited-quotation">
		<cite>2 Nephi 2:13</cite>
		<blockquote>
			<p>
				And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin.
				If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness.
				And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness.
				And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery.
				And if these things are not there is no God.
				And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.
			</p>
		</blockquote>
	</div>
	<p>
		The first part seems rather reasonable.
		A sin, according to the Mormons, is defined as the breaking of a commandment.
		Commandments are the laws given to us by Jehovah, so without these laws, sins by definition could not exist.
		After that, things start breaking down.
	</p>
	<p>
		Without sin, we have no righteousness.
		Are you sure about that?
		Remember, to sin is to break the laws given to us by Jehovah.
		Without those laws, we still have our own laws.
		Murder is unethical whether Jehovah forbids it or not.
		To do what is right has nothing to do with whether Jehovah told us to do it or not.
		In fact, I&apos;d take it a step further: all morality is subjective.
		What is righteous according to one isn&apos;t according to another.
		Jehovah, should he exist, is not at all exempt from this.
		Jehovah&apos;s morality is no more authoritative than anyone else&apos;s.
		Jehovah simply has all the power, and can impose his morals on everyone else.
		It&apos;s like when a large corporation has the massive amount of money needed to lobby for laws that allow the outsourcing of labour to countries that allow sweatshops.
		The corporation is able to throw its weight around to get access to sweatshops like it thinks are good.
		The rest of us know that sweatshops are immoral though.
		Having the power to impose your morals doesn&apos;t make your sense of morality a definitive guide.
		Morality, and thus righteousness, exist with or without Jehovah.
		Moratity, and thus righteousness, are completely subjective with or without Jehovah.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, we&apos;re told that without righteousness, there can be no happiness.
		Again, this simply isn&apos;t true.
		People derive happiness from a lot of things, and doing morally just works isn&apos;t always where they get it from.
		If we&apos;re defining righteousness as the following of Jehovah&apos;s laws, which we shouldn&apos;t, much happiness can be had while ignoring these laws.
		Doing what we know to be right, even while ignoring the word of Jehovah, brings happiness to many.
		If we&apos;re defining righteousness as the following of a moral code, which we should, we again see that happiness can be had while performing neutral acts, that are neither righteous nor terrible.
		This seems in fact to be where most happiness comes from.
		For some people, doing things they know to be wrong brings them happiness as well.
		Doing the right thing can make one happy.
		Don&apos;t get me wrong.
		But a lot of happiness comes from other places.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, we&apos;re told that without righteousness and happiness, there can be no punishment of misery.
		Let&apos;s start with misery.
		Imagine a world where all you could feel is misery.
		By definition, it would be a very miserable world.
		With misery being the only possible state, there would be nothing to contrast it with.
		And thus, we&apos;d have no need for a word that describes misery.
		Misery would still exist though.
		We just wouldn&apos;t know anything different than it.
		To punish someone is to cause them harm or displeasure because of something immoral they did.
		Without happiness, misery would be the only state.
		We can assume then that there&apos;s no continuum.
		You can&apos;t be more or less miserable than you already are, because to be more miserable, you&apos;d need less happiness, and to be less miserable, you&apos;d need more happiness.
		So without misery, no, there could be no punishment.
		But what about righteousness?
		Again, if we&apos;re claiming that Jehovah&apos;s word magically grants objective morality and thus the concept of righteousness, this is falls.
		You can be punished according to other, subjective forms of morality.
		However, if we&apos;re defining morality correctly, you can&apos;t be punished if there&apos;s no moral framework.
		It&apos;s difficult to find a way to eliminate all moral frameworks though.
		We instinctively know certain things to be good or bad according to our own internal sense of justice.
		So the claim holds up, but a world in which we could see the effects of there being no righteousness could not actually exist with us in it.
		So in the end, such a statement is meaningless.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, we&apos;re told that if there is no law, sin, righteousness, happiness, punishment, and misery, there&apos;s no god.
		Gods could certainly exist with or without any of these things.
		They did spell &quot;god&quot; with an upper-case &quot;G&quot; though, so they mean Jehovah.
		Jehovah could not exist without these things because they are so ingrained in who he is.
		If they weren&apos;t, he wouldn&apos;t be the Jehovah described by the book.
		He&apos;d be someone else.
		In fact none of us would be who we are.
		We&apos;d all be someone else.
	</p>
	<p>
		And finally, we&apos;re told that if Jehovah doesn&apos;t exist, nothing else exists either.
		After all, he created it all, so if he wasn&apos;t here to crate it, it wouldn&apos;t have been created at all.
		What if some <strong>*other*</strong> god created it though?
		We don&apos;t need Jehovah specifically for us to exist.
		Or, what if, Jehovah forbid, we weren&apos;t created by any sort of gods at all and the supernatural simply doesn&apos;t exist?
		Why does our world need to have been created for it to exist?
		If you have some reason why, this same reason would apply to Jehovah.
		He couldn&apos;t exist either without someone to create him.
		But his creator would suffer from the same need to follow logic and be created as well.
		It&apos;s turtles all the way down.
		If creationism is correct, there eventually needs to be some powerful entity not subject to it.
		And if there&apos;s a powerful entity not subject to it, it proves that creation isn&apos;t necessary for existence.
		It proves that we <strong>*could*</strong> exist without Jehovah creating us, though I admit it doesn&apos;t prove that we <strong>*did*</strong> come into being without him.
		Only that we could, and therefore our existence cannot be considered proof of Jehovah or any other creator.
	</p>
	<p>
		If you look a bit closer though, you see one last bit of information.
		As discussed above, the word &quot;law&quot; in the passage clearly refers specifically to commandments given by Jehovah.
		Everything gets traced back to the stated law.
		Each link of the chain points back to the law.
		At one point, after the chain has branched a bit, we&apos;re informed that without several thing that are stated to not be able to exist without Jehovah&apos;s commandments, Jehovah himself couldn&apos;t exist.
		A sane person could tell you that if someone doesn&apos;t exist, they can&apos;t issue orders.
		However, this passage tries to claim the opposite: if Jehovah didn&apos;t issue orders, he wouldn&apos;t be able to exist.
		That alone should tell you this book is the rantings of a madperson.
	</p>
